Francis Douce

“ THE QUEEN. She has just issued from her palace, when Death unexpectedly appears and forcibly drags her away. Her jester, in whose habiliments Death has ludicrously attired himself, endeavours in vain to protect his mistress. A female attendant is violently screaming. Death holds up his hour-glass to indicate the arrival of the fatal hour. “Mulieres opulentæ surgite, et audite vocem meam: post dies et annum, et vos conturbemini.” ”

“ It will not appear strange that the artist should have chosen the above subject for ornamenting the royal walls, if we consider that the founder of the Greek monarchy directed that he should be daily reminded of the admonition, ‘Remember, Philip, that thou art a man.’ In like manner did Holbein with his pencil give tongues to these walls to impress not only the king and his court, but every one who viewed them with the same reflection. ”

“ At each extremity of this division is a figure of Death sitting on a monument. The verses, in double columns, are placed between two borders with compartments. That on the right a scull crowned with a mitre; an angel with a censer; time carrying off a female on his back; Death with an infant in his arms; Death on horseback with a flag; Death wrestling with a man. The border on the left has a scull with a regal crown; an angel dancing with a book; Death carrying off an old man; Death leading a child; Death with a naked corpse; Death digging a grave. ”

“ It is well known to those who are conversant with engravings on wood, that the earliest impressions are not always the best; a great deal depending on the care and skill with which they were taken from the blocks, and not a little on the quality of the paper. As they were most likely engraved at Basle by an excellent artist, of whom more will be said hereafter, and at the instance of the Lyons booksellers or publishers, it is very probable that a few impressions would be taken off with German titles only for the use of the people of Basle, or other persons using the German language. ”

“ It is among Christian writers and artists that the personification of Death as a skeleton is intended to convey terrific ideas, conformably to the system that Death is the punishment for original sin.
The circumstances that lead to Death, and not our actual dissolution, are alone of a terrific nature; for Death is, in fact, the end and cure of all the previous sufferings and horrors with which it is so frequently accompanied. ”

“ But the favourite and principal emblem of mortality among our ancestors appears to have been the moral and allegorical pageant familiarly known by the appellation of the Dance of Death, which it has, in part, derived from the grotesque, and often ludicrous attitudes of the figures that composed it, and especially from the active and sarcastical mockery of the ruthless tyrant upon its victims, which may be, in a great measure, attributed to the whims and notions of the artists who were employed to represent the subject. ”

“ In these designs, which are wholly different from the dull and oftentimes disgusting Macaber Dance, which is confined, with little exception, to two figures only, we have the most interesting assemblage of characters, among whom the skeletonized Death, with all the animation of a living person, forms the most important personage; sometimes amusingly ludicrous, occasionally mischievous, but always busy and characteristically occupied. ”

“ In many of the old editions of Petrarch’s works which contain the triumphs, that of Death is usually accompanied with some terrific print of Death in a car drawn by oxen, trampling upon all conditions of men from the pope to the beggar.
“Guilleville, Pelerin de la vie humaine.” The pilgrim is conducted by Abstinence into a refectory, where he sees many figures of Death in the act of feeding several persons sitting at table. These are good people long deceased, who during their lives have been bountiful to their fellow-creatures. ”

“ It is a pious, quaint, and jingling address to Jeanne de Touszele, Abbess of the convent of St. Peter, at Lyons, in which the author, whose name is obscurely stated to be Ouzele, compliments the good lady as the pattern of true religion, from her intimate acquaintance with the nature of Death, rushing, as it were, into his hands, by her entrance into the sepulchre of a cloister. He enlarges on the various modes of representing the mortality of human nature, and contends that the image of Death has nothing terrific in the eyes of the Christian. ”

“ But where has Hegner discovered that Nieuhoff was a Dutch copper-plate engraver, by which is meant a professed artist; or even though he had been such, would that circumstance vitiate his testimony? In his dedication to Lord William Benting the expressions allusive to his ardent love of the arts, seem to constitute him an amateur attempter of etching; for what he has left us in that way is indeed of a very subordinate character, and unworthy of a professed artist. ”

“ He particularizes two of the most remarkable subjects, namely, the fat jolly cook, whom Death seizes by the hand, carrying on his shoulder a spit with a capon ready larded, which he looks upon with a wishful eye, as if he regretted being obliged to set out before it was quite roasted. ”

“ An alphabet with a Dance of Death, the subjects [Pg 101] of which, with a few exceptions, are the same as those in the other Dance; the designs, however, occasionally vary. In delicacy of drawing, in strength of character and in skill as to engraving they may be justly pronounced superior to every thing of the kind, and their excellence will probably remain a long time unrivalled. The figures are so small as almost to require the aid of lenses, the size of each letter being only an inch square. Zani had seen and admired this alphabet at Dresden. ”

“ There would also have been much less occasion for the author’s hyperbolical fears on the part of Death in the case of an engraver, than in that of a painter. He has stated that the rainbow subject, meaning probably that of the Last Judgment, was left unfinished; but it appears among the engravings in his edition. He must, therefore, have referred to a painting, with which likewise the expression “bold shadows and perspective,” seem better to accord than with a slight engraving on wood. ”

“ This book was most probably compiled by the celebrated John Fox, and is accompanied with elegant borders in the margins of every leaf cut in wood by an unknown artist whose mark is , though they have been most unwarrantably ascribed to Holbein, and even to Agnes Frey, the wife of Albert Durer, who is not known with any certainty to have practised the art of engraving. At the end is a Dance of Death different from every other of the kind, and of singular interest, as exhibiting the costume of its time with respect to all ranks and conditions of life, male and female. ”

“ It is certainly not a dance, but rather, with slight exception, a series of admirable groups of persons of various characters, among whom Death is appropriately introduced as an emblem of man’s mortality. ”

“ He has undertaken a task for which he has shown himself wholly unqualified, and with much unseemly arrogance, and its usual concomitant, ignorance, has assumed to himself a monopoly of information on the subject which he discusses. His arguments, if worthy of the name, are, generally speaking, of a most weak and flimsy texture. In support of his dogmatical opinion that the original designs for the Lyons Dance of Death exclusively belong to Holbein he has not adduced a single fact. ”

“ In the subject of the Pope there is in the original a brace of grotesque devils, one of which is completely erased in Glissenti, and a plug inserted where the other had been scooped out. A similar rasure of a devil occurs in the subject of the two rich men in conversation, the demon blowing with a bellows into his ear, whilst a poor beggar in vain touches him to be heard. Besides these cuts, Glissenti’s work is ornamented with a great number of others, connected in some way or other with the subject of Death, which the author discusses in almost every possible variety of manner. ”

“ Folio. In English, “The Spiritual Dance of Death in all kinds of pictures and representations, whereby persons of every age, sex, rank, and dignity, may be reminded of Death, from which lesson they may exercise themselves in virtue, and avoid sin. First put upon copper, and afterwards, through moral considerations and investigations brought to light in Death’s own colours, thereby for the good of the souls of the well inclined readers to awaken in them a lively fear and diligent anticipation of Death.” ”

“ The World being tired of his guest, and very desirous to get rid of, and plunder him of his property, under pretence of introducing him to Fortune, and consequent happiness, enters into a plot with Time to disguise Death, who is lodged in the same house with him, as Fortune, and thus to give him possession of the Man, who imagines that he is just about to secure Fortune. Each act of this piece is ornamented with some wood-cut that had been already introduced into the other work of Glissenti. ”

“ There were, during the middle of the 16th century, several artists equally competent to the undertaking, both as to invention and execution, as is demonstrable, among numerous other instances, from the spurious, but beautiful, Italian copy of the original cuts; from the scarcely distinguishable copies of the Lyons Bible cuts in an edition put forth by John Stelsius at Antwerp, 1561, and from the works of several artists, both designers and wood-engravers, in the books published by the French, Flemish, and Italian booksellers at that period. ”

“ The painter has introduced three young men on horseback with coronets on their caps, and who are attended by several domestics whilst pursuing the amusement of hawking. They arrive at the cell of Saint Macarius an Egyptian Anachorite, who with one hand presents to them a label with this inscription, as well as it can be made out, “Se nostra mente fia ben morta tenendo risa qui la vista affitta la vana gloria ci sara sconfitta la superbia e sara da morte;” and with the other points to three open coffins, in which are a skeleton and two dead bodies, one of them a king. ”

“ It must not be supposed that the republication of this singular work is intended to excite the lugubrious sensations of sanctified devotees, or of terrified sinners; for, awful and impressive as must ever be the contemplation of our mortality in the mind of the philosopher and practiser of true religion, the mere sight of a skeleton cannot, as to them, excite any alarming sensation whatever. It is chiefly addressed to the ardent admirers of ancient art and pictorial invention ”

“ Death behind is about to strike him with his dart. Upright, 81⁄2 by 61⁄2.
In an elegant series of prints, illustrative of the poetical works of Goethe, there is a poem of seven stanzas, intitled “Der Todtentanz,” where the embellishment represents a church-yard, in which several groups of skeletons are introduced, some of them rising, or just raised, from their graves; others in the attitude of dancing together or preparing for a dance. These prints are beautifully etched in outline in the manner of the drawings in the margins of Albert Durer’s prayer-book in the library of Munich. ”

“ After such an eulogium it is greatly to be regretted that notwithstanding a very diligent enquiry has been made concerning an artist, who, by the poet’s comparative view of him, is placed on the same footing with Holbein, and probably of the same school of painting, no particulars of his life or works have been discovered. ”

“ A very complicated and anonymous allegorical print, with a great variety of figures. In the middle, Death is striking with a sledge-hammer at a soul placed in a crucible over a sort of furnace. A demon with bellows is blowing the fire, and a female, representing the world, is adding fuel to it. In various parts of the print are Dutch inscriptions. Oblong, 101⁄2 by 6.
Two old misers, a man and a woman. She weighs the gold, and he enters it in a book. Death with an hour-glass peeps in at one window, and the Devil at another. On the left, stands a demon with a book and a purse of money. ”

“ The indefinite statements of Bishop Burnet and M. Patin, together with those of the numerous and [Pg 139] careless travellers who have followed blind leaders, and too often copied each other without the means or inclination of obtaining correct information, are deserving of very little attention. The circumstance of Holbein’s having painted a Dance of Peasants somewhere in the above city, in conjunction with the usual mistake of ascribing to him the old Macaber Dance, seems to have occasioned the above erroneous statements as to a Dance of Death by his pencil. ”

“ The triumphal car of Time drawn by genii, and accompanied by a pope, cardinal, emperor, king, queen, &c. At the top of the car, Death blows a trumpet, to which a banner is suspended, with “Je trompe tout le monde.” ”

“ He has placed undue confidence in his predecessor, Paul Christian Hilscher, whose work, printed at Dresden in 1705, had probably misled the truly learned Fabricius in what he has said concerning Macaber in his valuable work, the “Bibliotheca mediæ et infimæ ætatis.” Meintel confesses his inability to point out the origin or the inventor of the subject. The last and completest work on the Dance, or Dances of Death, is that of the ingenious M. Peignot, so well and deservedly known by his numerous and useful books on bibliography. ”

“ Some writers have maintained that they exclusively represented Death as a mere skeleton; whilst others have contended that this figure, so frequently to be found upon gems and sepulchral monuments, was never intended to [Pg 2] personify the extinction of human life, but only as a simple and abstract representation. They insist that the ancients adopted a more elegant and allegorical method for this purpose; that they represented human mortality by various symbols of destruction, as birds devouring lizards and serpents, or pecking fruits and flowers ”

“ Death in a huge pair of jack-boots, seizes him by the arm with a view to unhorse him. 2. The Tinker. Death, with a skillet on his head, plunders the tinker’s basket. 3. The Hussar on horseback, accompanied by Death, also mounted, and, like his comrade, wearing an enormous hat with a feather. 4. The Physician. Death habited as a modern beau, with chapeau-bras, brings his urinal to the Doctor for inspection. 5. The fraudulent Innkeeper in the act of adulterating a cask of liquor is seized and throttled by a very grotesque Death in the habit of an alewife, with a vessel at her back. ”

“ At E. 35, Death shooting with a cross-bow at a miser before his chest of money, the motto, “Nec divitiis nec auro.” At E. 44, Death seizes a young man writing the words, “sic visum superis” on a tablet, the motto, “Viva virtus est funeris expers.” At G. 32, Death pursues a king and a peasant, all on horseback, the motto, “Mors sceptra ligonibus æquat.” At G. 66, a woman looking in a mirror sees Death, who stands behind her reflected, the motto, “Tota vita sapientis est meditatio mortis.” ”